Disney lays out its online video stats

Disney outlined its digital video vital signs on its earnings conference call on Tuesday and the stats look like this:

• 92 million ad-supported episodes from ABC and Disney have been requested since September;
• 23.7 million Disney shows have been sold on iTunes;
• 2 million movies have been sold on iTunes.

Among other digital highlights from Disney. Keep in mind Disney didn't outline much if anything about its Web properties in its earnings release. The business is organized around networks, consumer products and theme parks for the most part. Overall, Disney profit surged ahead of Wall Street estimates in the quarter.

On Disney's fiscal second quarter earnings call CEO Bob Iger said Disney.com, which launched in February with more social features has seen registrations increase. Iger didn't break out hard numbers though. The game is clear though, Iger said:

We continue to view the broadband-enabled Internet as an important entertainment medium and our creative and technological investments in Disney, ESPN and ABC.com are designed with that premise in mind.

On the call, Iger was asked about Disney.com's uptake and whether advertising revenue could hit the $700 million mark that that company has mentioned previously.

Iger noted that Disney.com has bolstered usage to the point where it has "created a significant increase in available space for advertising."

Iger added:

"The revenue that we are seeing from advertising on that site is up very, very substantially from when we launched and from the prior site. We are going to walk before we run, in that we are still working through what we think will be a real balance between revenue-generating opportunities and the right consumer experience when they go to the site. But we look at our online activity as having the ability to generate growth pretty much from multiple perspectives. One, we certainly believe it will generate growth in advertising revenue. Two, we are creating more opportunities for potential subscription or what I will call video-on-demand business. Three, it is very powerful from a CRM perspective. We are connecting customers to more of Disney in a very user-friendly way, and we think that has some real potential not just to better manage customers, but to give customers an opportunity to basically buy more of Disney."

Translation: Upsell, upsell, upsell.

Overall though, Iger declined to offer specifics about digital revenue in the quarter. It's obviously not at the levels Disney wants or it would be talking about it publicly. "We have seen huge growth in advertising revenue," said Iger.

To reach full potential though Iger noted that Disney has to walk the line between selling directly to consumers through Disney.com and working with other partners--Comcast, Cox and others--to get traffic.

Said Iger:

"We are looking at a blend. We look for the right platform, meaning the right environment, the right technologies, something which we think fundamentally works with consumers. We are looking for the right pricing or the right business proposition. Generally speaking, we are looking for deals that enable us the flexibility to continue to go direct to the consumer as well. So we are not entering into any exclusive deals. You are likely to see that trend – meaning the blend and essentially taking a non-exclusive approach both to our own sites and to third-party sites – for quite a while."